Good Evening from Rome

Here are some highlights from the last few days...

We took the ferry from Naples to Sorrenton on Friday morning - bottom line - we definitely want to go back and visit and explore the Amalfi Coast. Sorrento was truly amazing. I'll post a few pictures now and more when we get home.

Friday evening we had a LOVELY dinner with Val Laurita - she is the Aunt of my boyfriend from college Joshua and has lived in Naples for 40 years. She is just a gem of a lady and treated us to a great dinner at a sidewalk cafe just around the corner from our hotel.

Saturday morning was primarily spent packing our things and getting ready to leave. We had breakfast at the hotel and Chelsey & Lindsey met us there at noon. We definitely didn't want to walk to the train station after our experience when we arrived so took a taxi and arrived at the station in about 10 minutes. The train ride from Naples to Rome was about 3 hours and the kids slept almost the entire way. We arrived in Rome just after 3pm and found our hotel no problem - it is only about a 7 minute walk from the Roma Termini (the main Rome train station).

We had dinner with Chelsey & Lindsey at a decent but very tourist oriented restaurant. The kids sat in the first high chairs we have seen in any restaurant on our trip!

This morning we caught the 6:10 AM train from Roma Termini to Pisa Centrale. The train ride was just shy of 3 hours long. In Pisa we were picked up at the station by Herbert Mulligan. He and his wife Heidi have lived just outside of Pisa for almost 2 years. They have three darling children ages 1 - Luca (boy), 3 - Katrine (girl) and 6 - Loren (girl). Heidi is originally from North Dakota and Herbert is from Ireland. They are part of our world wide fellowship. We had never met them but had been given their name by our ministers in Paris (who we had been connected with via a minister from Washington state who has been working in France (currently in Switzerland)whose family I have known basically my entire life (her twin sister lives in Everett). I had e-mailed with Herbert before we left the states and then called them last evening to make arrangements. We had a lovely Sunday morning fellowship meeting in their home. Herbert's parents were visiting from Ireland and another lady who travels from 2 hours away (Jetta) was also in the meeting. After meeting we had coffee and sweets followed by a lovely soup and bread lunch with Irish butter.

The kids thoroughly enjoyed having the opportunity to play with toys and other kids - it was so sweet to see them all having such a good time.

After lunch and some singing around the piano, Heidi took us to a historic town near by called Lucca - we took in a few of the sights there which included an antiques flea market which was really cool to see. Darin was very interested in all of the antique door hardware but the set we inquired on was 350 Euro so...we definitely aren't bringing that home!

From Lucca we caught the train to Florence and had just shy of two hours to see a few sights. I haven't loaded the photos from yesterday and today yet so won't be able to post them until later. We also had a quick dinner in Florence and some amazing Gelato before hopping on the train back to Rome.

We had hoped to do some laundry tonight but the lavanderia (Laundromat) closed at 10 so will have to go in the morning - we are definitely running low on anything clean to wear.

Here are a couple of photos from Sorrento for your viewing pleasure!